I have to admit it. I was bored in the superbowl until the last 5 minutes or so. I was enjoying chatting with friends, but the game was going right over my head. Of Eli had been intercepted there, this would have gone down as a boring sloppy game, but instead….
I turned 21 when I was in Minneapolis. It was a little strange “being able to drink” since I had already been able to drink for years in England. I still think that the age for drinking and driving should be flipped in the US, mainly as I saw kids going nuts in college as it was “so naughty”.
The morning after my birthday celebrations I woke up groggy, laying without clothes on the floor of my bedroom. The last thing I remembered was getting a drink at Kierans.
That drink was a special concoction, recorded by an old friend Brian O’Neilly:
Ingredients
Instructions
Layer in order (Bailey’s at the bottom of the glass) in a shot glass.
Now, I swear that the Irish bar tender heard I was a brit, and put in some “green leprechaun” nonsense. Whatever it was, I apparently went nuts. I started to babble on singing about Rainbow which confused everyone as Minnesotans only know of Rainbow the grocery store. I also started talking about Braveheart, and god knows what else. I am happy to have lost those memories I am sure.
If anyone offers you this drink, be warned!
There are few things that you cannot change when you think about it. Your weight, eye color, sex, name, language, location, and many more. You could even skin graft and get different finger prints. About the only thing that you can’t mess with is time.
Why am I thinking about this? Was I smoking something last night, which lead me to waxing lyrically about random crud? No.
Wouldn’t it be cool if you were born on 08/08/08. It would be easy to remember, and have others get your birthday right (even without Facebook telling them).
However, if you give birth on 08/07/08 tough luck. Sorry. You have that planted on you for your entire life.
I thought it was a lost cause. These hospitals are serious. But, then I wondered:
What would happen if I went into the wilderness and had a baby out there? Surely I would come in and someone would have to take my word on the date?
I have seen this first hand. I do not want to generalize here, but when I was a youngster playing cricket for Middlesex, I am sure that some of the other kids that had recently immigrated to the UK were a touch older than they claimed. I know that some people can get facial hair at an early age, but some of these guys were quite obvious. I think that the same happens in the little league via the Dominican Republic, and others.
In conclusion, if you are having a kid near 08/08/08, consider having the kid in The Bush and sneak in the magic date!
cute [kyoot] had a new definition today. Sam has been watching Pooh again, and he got a new tool bench for Christmas this year.
We walk into his room this morning and he has Eeyore in one hand, and a hammer in the other and he is trying to fix him by putting his tail on. Awwww.
Speaking of Pooh. I can’t believe that this title made it through the publishers watching eye. I don’t think that “Cooking with Pooh” will sell well:
It is the season where you actually get snail mail other than bills that don’t let you say “only electronic please”, and junk coupons for crap you don’t need. The thought of doing a holiday letter didn’t do anything for me this year. The only people that don’t know what I have been up to at a high level…. well…. if they don’t know, why do we care so much to tell them? They are the people we never see!
What would be a more modern holiday letter? I was going to do a video montage of the years events, but that is going to be too much work for now. Maybe a roundup of my blog posts? So 2006.
I know. A dump of my tweets! They are a little sporadic, as there were times where I came and went from Twitter, but this surely tells you what kind of year I had:
December
November
October
September
August
July
June
April
Speaking of “Christmas” letter vs. holiday letter vs. winter solstice letter vs. Kwanza letter….. the Wisconsin state government managed to waste two weeks in a special session deciding whether they could rename the tree a “christmas tree”, and it came through. Thank god they spend our tax dollars on the tough decision. I hated it when it was a holiday tree.
Oh, and then there is the HILARIOUS story happening over in Green Bay. Go festivus pole!
You have heard the stories of how immigrants had their name changed as they went through Ellis. Rockowskus became Rock. Smyth became Smith.
The US government wants me to be “Almear”. The INS somehow messed up my green card even though when I look at all of the forms they are spelled correctly, and I have Almear on it. Grr. Having to get this changed will be a royal pain in the backside. Nothing with the INS is simple, easy, or fast. They make the IRS look like a well oiled machine!
The problem got worse today, as I had the pleasure of doing the DMV jig in California. Taking another “test” on how many pounds a 5 year old has to be before you need a proper restraint and all that jazz. Turning your wheels in various directions depending on if you are uphill, downhill, and if there is a curb. Once I had passed the test, they got to work on my new license. They spelled my name “Almear”. They said that since they were using my Green card as the official document they had too!
I don’t want to have Almear smear through my real name, so I had to tell them to only give me the temporary license, and I need to work with the INS to fix the green card, and then I can change the license. I can’t wait :/
My family name “Almaer” is a rare one. We have never found any others in England, and the same goes for the US. The family tree goes back in many directions, to countries all over Europe, and one line is aristocracy in England.
Then, out of the blue, I got a Skype message from “Jean Almaer”. Hmm, it could be bogus. I added Jean to Skype, and it took forever until he was online at the same time as I. I sent him a message and then it began. We knew that the name came from Belgium, and Jean Almaer lives in Flanders! I have gotten my Dad in touch, and we are working down the line to see if/where we connect. Pierre, Jean’s brother, is a linguist and knows about the history of our name:
“Almaer” is definitely a Dutch/Flemish name in this spelling. “ae” is the old spelling for long “a” (now replaced by “aa”). The German equivalent would be Almar. The etymology : “al” stands for adel/adal/German Edel, or Old English Aethel,Ethel, as in Alfred, Albert, Aethelred, and means “noble”, and mar (or “maer” in its Flemish/Dutch form) is an old Germanic word meaning “famous”. I was told by the same professor that “Almaer” used to be a (very rare) first name in Flanders. Note that the German family name “Almer” is of a different origin and stems from the Alm river in Bavaria. The Flemish name Olmer has the same etimology as “Almaer”. There are a few Olmers in Belgium, but no Almaers (except our family, of course)
My favourite part of an email was this sentence which was saying how exciting it is to work this all out:
To tell the truth, the “da Vinci code” story is almost as funny as a phone directory of West Mongolia, compared to this.
Classic :) I am excited to see more Almaers out in the world!
I woke up on Thanksgiving Day to some crusty warm popovers. Yummie. I appreciated them (and my wife!) a lot more this morning, as I just got back from London. Now, people like to poke fun of British cuisine, but for the most part I am quite happy there. For this trip I got too:
Lot’s of good stuff there, and I hope Ben appreciated the food compared with some of our other trips to Europe, which had him in horror mode.
My favourite meal of the day is breakfast. I have been spoiled by the american version too. Waffles, pancakes, french toast, crepes, decent bacon, eggs, hash browns, etc etc. The breakfast at our hotel (a nice one) was an awful euro-buffet. You are expected to double down on dodgy meat. In the end, I always end up going for the cereal and yoghurt.
To be fair, it is a touch better than Germany where the same meat comes out for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
What else did I notice about my lovely home town this time around?
ITV Play. Really?
There is a TV show on ITV called Play (used to be a network but was caught cheating) which is so poor that it amazes me that it exists. I had to have Ben watch it too. The show has a random idiot thrown in front of a camera and babbles on trying to get someone to phone in (or text or play online) to answer a really silly wordplay puzzle. The answers always seem obvious, but then you see that there are actually 399999999 words that could fit in, or the answer they are looking for it insanely bizarre. Sometimes the same puzzle is on screen for an entire hour and the host resorts to true silliness to pass the time. Why does anyone watch this crap? If you win you also normally win a whopping 10p.
Mangos are juicy
A big deal was made about six months back when real Indian mangos were allowed back in the states after a long embargo. Finally, the juicy mango didn’t have to get smuggled in. In London, which also doubles as little india, we found out that mangos are very juicy. As Ben and I were walking down Upper Street in Islington, we got belted on our backs. We turned around to see 10 youngsters whipping fruit at us. We thought they would laugh and move on, but they kept going! Ben ended up returning fire, and then we luckily reached our destination so they couldn’t keep wailing on us. Lovely.
London is a good place to bring a jacket
Ben showed up in London without a jacket. He will tell you that “there is a story” but really. No jacket in London. It also didn’t help that it rained all but 2 hours of our entire trip. At least our arms could get a work out as they held up umbrellas. Man the weather was bad. I heard that it got really nice on Wednesday (after we left). Getting back to sunny and 65 degrees has been a real pleasure :)
I took Ben out of London to see more of England itself. A mate lives out in the boonies (Coggeshall, Essex) so we head there to do a traditional pub meal, and a little walk. Watching Ben freeze was a lot of fun. Looking at the prices of houses was also fun. “600 thousand pounds for this dump in a little village?”. Ben had a truly big grin though when my mates wife told him that the national health service was crap and that everyone is lazy and soaks money from the government. “Your little socialist bubble has been destroyed”, Ben said. I really hope that he watches Sicko (even taking it with a pinch of salt).
Expedia messed up names
I was sharing a taxi to the airport with Brendan Eich. He was staying in another hotel (which he chose as he wanted to be closer to the conference, but it turned out that it was further away :)) so I got the cab and went over there in the morning to pick him up. When I got there he wasn’t waiting in the lobby so I went in and asked the front desk to call his room. “I am sorry sir, no Brendan Eich here”. Hmm, maybe he has checked out? “I am sorry sir, no-one called Brendan Eich has stayed with us”. I started to sweat. Was he at another hotel? I tried to think if there was another hotel with a similar name. Nope. I cranked open the laptop and got his number up. I called it. No answer. Bugger. At some point I would have to choose to hit the airport! Then the good news, he called back: “Sorry, I am a bit late. I am in the lobby checking out”. I walked back over and sure enough he was doing just that. It turned out that the hotel had him down under his mothers name. I guess being CTO of Mozilla is a celebrity-like situation so he has to check in under fake names ;)
A beautiful city
I did really enjoy taking advantage of being right in the busy. Walking past the Abbey, parliament, the Thames, the eye, down to Holborn, over to SoHo, through Hyde/St James park, past Buckingham palace, and back home, was real fun. A great city. As long as you realize that the tube will be broken half the time.
“You see $1800? I see $800!”
That is what I said to Ben as we were looking at flights to London for our trip to @mediaAjax. I am writing this on the flight itself as I look over Greenland. Only 5 hours to go! :/
It showed just how bizarre the pricing of flights can be. I taught a bit at Sabre, which gave me an appreciation of why that may be the case. One of the classes was so poorly managed that we ended up having to take equipment out of a closet, and installed desks and computers (they had double booked the training room and this was the best they could do).
Anyway, a difference of more then 100% for exactly the same flight? This lead to me booking the flight for Ben and put me in the position. Ben was giving me his info as I filled out the forms on united.com, but then a drop down shone like a beacon into my eyes.
MEAL PREFERENCE
Oh man, the prank was here. I took a look at the list which is surprisingly large. I had to get the right balance here. “Gluten free” would result in some paste that would be inedible (not that plane food is ever gourmet. I had the salad). Kosher? nah. Then it came: Hindu. This was a safe bet as it would just be vegetarian, which is probably one of the better options. I selected it and tried so hard not to crack up as we went down the list setting it all up. All I could think of was the site of a flight attendant walking up to Ben and saying:
stewardess from the 60s: “Mr. Galbraith, we have your special meal”
Ben: “Erm, huh?”
sft60s: “Yes sir, your Hindu meal”
I have been so proud of myself, and today the time was here! But, it all went arse backwards as Ben changed his earlier flight to the Bay to “spend more time with the family” (goody two shoes) and cocked up the times. This meant that he had no way to connect and had to get on another flight. I feel gipped. Next time, Mr. Galbraith.
I hope you read the title with a Seinfeld voice. The last three flights that I have been on had one thing in common (apart from the pretzels):
People using highlighters on books / papers
I have never quite understood the desire to highlight as I have seen it in the US. I remember first watching this act at Uni here in the states. The practice looked the same for all three people on the flights:
The strange thing here is that the people never seem to really be reading the darn thing. They are going at record speed. The other puzzling thought is that on average it appeared that two thirds of the page was yellow before it was all said and done.
Yes, MORE CONTENT was highlighted on the page than not! It’s crazy.
I could totally understand it if the process was:
Oh, and I know that you have been given a hand-me-down which is more yellow than not. How annoying is that :)
My posts, status updates, link blog, and anything else I do on the web is here:
I am honoured to be working with my long time friend and collaborator Ben Galbraith on helping to set the direction of the industry.